Meet Soccer Pro Abby Wambach!

Most Read

Whether she's on the field or off, Olympic medalist and pro soccer
player Abby Wambach is always pushing herself and her body to the
limit. Seventeen chatted with this star athlete to learn how she trains and stays motivated, and what she plans on doing after her career in soccer is over.

17: So we heard you just got home to LA. Where have you been?

Abby Wambach: I've been in the Washington DC area, playing in the Women's Professional Soccer league here in the United States. A team is there, we're called The Washington Freedom and we play just outside DC in Maryland. So, I've been living in the suburbs of Maryland.

AW: I come from a very large family, I'm the youngest of seven. My mom used to chauffeur us around to all of our different athletic events. She would catch a couple of innings of my bother's baseball game, and then come watch me play half a game of soccer. From a pretty early age my mother realized that I was a little bit more gifted and talented than my own age group. So, she moved me over to play with the boys' travel soccer team when I was about 11 years old. I have to give my mom credit for a my success in a lot of ways because she was very particular on the coaches and the teachers and the teams that all of her kids played on, because she's a firm believer in leadership and guidance. In a very weird way gave those people the ultimate authority. Whereas, nowadays, it's very different and parents want all the authority and unfortunately it creates a power struggle for the younger generation that can easily be avoided if the parents just do the research and the work ahead of time to find the right teachers and coaches. Because you can't learn life from one or two people, your parents, you have to learn from all these different sources. My mom especially did the work and found the right coaches for me to play under and learn from. So, I give her a lot of credit for my success.

17: If you couldn't play soccer, what would be your dream job?

AW: After I broke my leg last
year, I did a lot of soul searching. I questioned a lot, because eventually I'm going to retire; I'm not going to be able to play
forever.
I really enjoy helping people out, and I enjoy time spent with kids. I spent some time at an organic camp and I think that's something I could see myself doing. It's not going to be just a soccer camp. I want it to be a camp that talks about life skills and teach kids about living a more healthy lifestyle and green living. It would be cool for it to be attached to an organic farm that completely sustains the entire camp. Maybe it's a big dream, maybe it's where I want to end up living.

17: Do you have any training or workout tips for our readers?

AW: Nowadays, the science is so different than what it used to be. 10 years ago, my workout tip would be to find a pace to go running at and try to stay at that pace. Challenge yourself, stay at that pace for that particular run, but try to get faster almost every single time you go out. Giving yourself goals. I think that in order to get better as an athlete and to see whatever kind of results you're after, you have to make goals. Whether you write them down or tell someone about them, it's important to set goals for yourself in order to achieve any kind of success. It's not about running 10 miles or it's not about what your body actually looks like. I think there's so much emphasis on body image, and results and outcome, but really what you should be after is to be healthy and to feel good about yourself. I think by virtue of obtaining those two things, all those other things will fall into place. Your body will look great, and you'll achieve those mileage goals that you're after. I would just say, have the goals and the emphasis be oriented around how you feel, and your health, rather than what you look like or how far you can run.

AW: Motivation is a tricky thing, because so often we're looking to motivate ourselves from the outside in. It's like the diet you start every Monday. I think it's because the motivation is outwardly influenced and not internally influenced. Motivation has to come from yourself; you can't have anything else to be your true motivation. Yes, there can be other things externally that motivate you for sure, but I think when you get down to the most basic level, you have to motivate yourself by wanting to do things for you and not for any other reason. Unfortunately, teens are stuck in a really weird time when all the things that they read about in magazines are about being thin and beautiful. There has to be a definition change to the word "Beautiful" these days, because I don't think thin is beautiful, I think Fit is beautiful. Healthy is beautiful. To get out and to go work out has to be total self-discipline that you put into your life and you keep in your life, no matter what.

17: What was your motivation when you were in high school?

AW: Back in high school, true be told, I didn't like to go running. I didn't really see the benefit of it, because all I would do is spend time on the soccer field, training to be a soccer player. I didn't really need to go for long-distance runs. Over the course of my career, especially when I got into college, I realized the added benefit of lifting weights, and the added benefit of doing fitness almost to the point of sheer exhaustion. Until I experienced that, and those feelings afterwards, the way that I felt about myself and about my life and about the world, that stuff changes when you go through going through really really working hard. None of it is easy. Looking like you feel like you want to look and being a fit and healthy human being, it's not a easy task. You have to plan on it. If you do not play a professional sport like I do, you have to plan for it. You have to make plans to workout in a day. Put it into your schedule like it's part of your business life. Put it into your schedule like it's part of your school life. Whatever it is, if you input being fit, and working out, and being active, and being healthy, then I think that you're more likely to do that if you're like, "Oh, I'll run at some point." I find myself doing that and I like to workout. I get paid to! If I can fall through some of those cracks, then I'm sure all of your readers and people who don't do this on a professional level do it as well.

17: What do you like to do for fun?

AW: I like to go to movies. I like to surf. I like to cook. I like to read. I'm a huge e-mail-er, or sit and talk on the phone kind of person. I don't like to text message. I'm just a normal person. I think that so often people get so caught up in me being a little abnormal, in terms of my ability as a soccer player, but they do forget that celebrities and famous people, and pro athletes, we all do the same things pretty much. We all have talent in some areas of out lives, just like they do, we just do on a bigger stage in front of the public eye. We're all the same.

17: What about beauty tips for teen athletes or a girl-on-the-go?

AW: Obviously, I'm a little bit more natural and I'm not necessarily even the type of person to wear makeup. So, my beauty tip is the more natural you can be, the better. I think that we wrap ourselves around having to impress other people so much that we lose sight of who we are. I'm not saying that makeup and getting done-up is bad, don't get me wrong. I'm saying that in moderation, everything can be good. I think that if you're a teenager going to high school feeling like you have to wear makeup in order to leave your house, that's probably a bit of a problem. I think that we all need to be in our most natural state in order to understand who we are as people.